What is Richard Sackler’s Net Worth?
Richard Sackler, an American businessman and physician, has a net worth of $1 billion. He is part of the Sackler family, which is worth $14-15 billion.
Sackler’s notoriety comes from his role as president of Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical company responsible for producing the painkiller OxyContin. Under his leadership, the company contributed to the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States, which has killed or harmed hundreds of thousands of people.
As a result, Sackler, his family, and Purdue have faced numerous lawsuits and fines.
Early Life and Education
Richard Sackler was born on March 10, 1945 in Roslyn, New York to Beverly and Raymond. His father was a businessman and physician who acquired the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma with his brothers Arthur and Mortimer in 1952.
For his higher education, Richard Sackler earned his BA degree from Columbia University and went on to obtain his MD from the New York University School of Medicine.
Richard Sackler’s Role in Purdue Pharma and OxyContin
Richard Sackler joined the family company, Purdue Pharma, in 1971 and quickly rose to become head of research and development as well as head of marketing. He was instrumental in the development of OxyContin, an opiate that was falsely and untested claimed to be less addictive than other painkillers of its kind. Sackler pushed the drug through FDA approval in 1995 despite the well-known addictive nature of such opiates.
In 1999, Sackler became the president of Purdue and continued to promote false and misleading claims about OxyContin. He even enlisted company employees to advance bogus narratives that addiction to the drug was unrelated to anything in the drug itself. Additionally, Sackler pushed pharmaceutical representatives to encourage doctors to prescribe overly high doses of the drug to patients in order to increase Purdue’s profits.
By 2003, Sackler became co-chairman of Purdue and was placed in charge of the research department and its development of OxyContin. He oversaw targeted marketing schemes that pushed sales of the drug to pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and academics.
Purdue Pharma’s Role in the Opioid Epidemic
Purdue Pharma, led by the Sackler family, played a significant role in the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States. The company faced fines for misleading the public about the addictiveness of OxyContin, and paid out $600 million in 2007. In 2015, Purdue settled for $24 million in a case brought by Kentucky prosecutors, while demanding the destruction or return of incriminating internal documents. The State of Massachusetts sued Purdue and the Sacklers in 2018, leading to Purdue filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019. In 2020, Purdue reached a settlement worth around $8 billion and acknowledged intentionally pushing OxyContin without a legitimate medical purpose. The Sacklers were ordered to pay $225 million. The US House of Representatives introduced a bill in 2021 to prevent the Sacklers from receiving legal immunity during bankruptcy proceedings. Purdue earned approval to dissolve the company and restructure it into a public benefit corporation focused on repaying those affected by the opioid crisis.
Richard Sackler’s Notoriety
The Sackler family has been the subject of various films, television series, and books, with Richard Sackler taking center stage in many of them. He was portrayed by Michael Stuhlbarg in the Hulu miniseries “Dopesick,” and Laura Poitras’s 2022 documentary film “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” follows New York photographer Nan Goldin and her advocacy group P.A.I.N. as they stage protests to hold the Sacklers accountable for their crimes.
In 2021 alone, the family was at the center of the two-party HBO documentary “The Crime of the Century,” and the book “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.” The Sacklers’ attempts at reputation laundering include the Richard and Beth Sackler Foundation, which they established, among others.
Richard Sackler was previously married to Beth, and they had three children named Rebecca, Marianna, and David.
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